"
"If he is not Canalis, who is he then?" said Modeste in a changed
voice.
"The secretary; his name is Ernest de La Briere. He is not a nobleman;
but he is one of those plain men with fixed principles and sound
morality who satisfy parents. However, that is not the point; you have
seen him and nothing can change your heart; you have chosen him,
comprehend his soul, it is as beautiful as he himself."
The count was interrupted by a heavy sigh from Modeste. The poor girl
sat with her eyes fixed on the sea, pale and rigid as death, as if a
pistol shot had struck her in those fatal words, _a plain man, with
fixed principles and sound morality_.
"Deceived!" she said at last.
"Like your poor sister, but less fatally."
"Let us go home, father," she said, rising from the hillock on which
they were sitting. "Papa, hear me, I swear before God to obey your
wishes, whatever they may be, in the _affair_ of my marriage."
"Then you don't love him any longer?" asked her father.
"I loved an honest man, with no falsehood on his face, upright as
yourself, incapable of disguising himself like an actor, with the
paint of another man's glory on his cheeks.
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